Do days get nicer than this? Yes, they will get warmer, but this was that first grace of seasonal shift and I absolutely revelled in it. Got out my bike for the first time today and slipped down to OCAD. The streets were positively jubilant and zestful, filled with happy ants on their happy way. I'm not projecting at all -- the sidewalks were packed and I literally saw one or two people smiling. It was shocking.

I was there to do a reading -- in what I suppose (he says playfully) was the World Premiere of the Haikube. The class was focussed on ideas of narrative, so I dipsy-doodled through some older works that seemed relevant, a set from the anagrams, and then read the entire Haikube. Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel were on-hand with the cube itself, so after the reading we broke into a general discussion. The response, by all outward signs, was enthusiastic; the discussion was fairly robust, I sold a bunch of books, and the students lined up after class (literally single-file and patient) to touch and manipulate the cube. It was a lot of fun -- and it was my first time "up the stilts." It is truly amazing how they can get such an externally audacious building to look so mundane, dull, and lifeless from the inside. The Canadian architectural revolution moves but one step at a time.



More fun after the reading -- the three of us with Prof. Siobhan O'Flynn walked down to Queen St for a few pints in the Black Bull sunshine. We spoke of the possibility of building a java applet or something and a website with an interactive model of the Haikube, that people might create their own poems from it. We spent a good couple of hours on the patio. Truly glorious -- and a delicious bike ride home up Spadina, China Town, Kensington, Bloor, and Little Korea. I'm currently re-reading Dionne Brand's What We All Long For, a celebratory exploration of Toronto's multicultural experiment. As I moved through the various neighbourhoods, the city seemed to awake from its restless seasonal slumber, and the mosaic promise the book suggests is possible seemed genuine and alive.